


Found on the Losing Side

by apliddell



Series: A Chemical Defect [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Adultery, F/M, M/M, Pre HLV, Sherlock Series 3 Spoilers, post tsot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 15:25:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2030196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apliddell/pseuds/apliddell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Sherlock consummate their relationship and try to keep it a secret from Mary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Found on the Losing Side

"I said I’d be home for tea." John speaks softly, and his hand in my hair is distracting.

It takes me a moment to understand what he means. He helps me along by sliding his hand from my scalp to my shoulder and applying gentle but unmistakable pressure to shift me off him. Roll away from him at once and turn my back on him, drawing my knees up. I hate this bit. John sighs and rests his hand on my shoulder. Feels lovely. I want more. Shake him off and pull the sheets up to my chin. John sighs again. “I’ll see you soon, all right? I’ll text you tomorrow.”

I just want to disappear into insensibility until he’s left, but he sounds so sad that I nod. Can’t help it. Don’t look at him, though. He pats my hip, and I take no notice of it. John collects his clothes from the floor, and I listen to him dress quickly. Sloppy. I’ve seen him dress in the morning (not recently. Before.) and he’s rather a clotheshorse. Takes his time. He’s going to be caught, if he doesn’t have a bit more care about it. He wants to be caught, though. Wants to force my hand. I’m dreading it and longing for it. He’s nearly finished dressing now. I’ve memorised the sounds of him tying his shoelaces(!). He pauses silently, waiting for me to acknowledge his departure. Another sigh. “Well. I’m off then.”

"Don’t want to be late for tea." Comes out as a sneer, shouldn’t have said anything. I can picture the wince that flashes across his face. Still haven’t looked at him.

"That’s your goodbye?" I imagine his left hand flexing.

"Goodbye, John."

"Right. Bye then." Nod again, still not looking at him. I would, if I could. I can hear him all the way through the flat as he leaves. He lets himself out differently, now he doesn’t live here anymore. Shuts the door gently, timidly. Like a guest. When I can’t hear him on the stairs (three steps down?), I get out of bed and go to the sitting room window, twitch open the curtains, and look out onto the street in front of the flat. John appears on the pavement a few moments later, and when he’s reached the kerb, he looks over his shoulder up at my window. We catch eyes. I want to duck away, but I make myself look at him. The right side of his mouth twitches up (he smiles with the right side of his mouth; the left is always turned down a bit). I hope my expression doesn’t change. After a few seconds, he turns to the street and raises an arm to hail a cab.

I can still smell him on me. I go and have a shower before he’s got his cab. Pleasantly scalding shower. The hot spray almost makes me feel relaxed. John left a green cake of pine-smelling soap in the shower cubicle ages ago. It’s still there, but I don’t use it. I borrowed some from Mrs Hudson. I step out of the shower with dripping hair, flushed and smelling of violets.

After I dry off and put on my dressing gown, I get a cigarette from the skull on the mantle. There are ashtrays in the flat now. Sometimes I use the crystal one from the palace. My phone is sitting next to the skull and the alert light is flashing. Swipe it open. Text from John.

Is this a clever ploy to get me back there sooner?  
J

 

Smile (can’t help it) and light my cigarette.

 

Probably. Which of my possible ploys are you alluding to?  
SH

 

I’ve got your notepad. How did you get it into my pocket?  
J

 

You must have thought it was yours and taken it by mistake, you clod. I didn’t plant it on you.  
SH

 

I did used to consider planting evidence on him. I’ve mostly given it up now, though. He shows so much of his own.

 

Check and see if you’ve got mine. If not, I’ve lost it.  
J

 

I leave my phone on the arm of my chair and get up to check my coat pockets. Find John’s notepad at once and return to my chair to text him back.

 

Got it.  
SH

 

Brilliant. You’ll want yours back right away, I suppose. I’ll pop round and drop it off tomorrow?  
J

 

Fine.  
SH

 

Nicotine patches are on the mantle as well, you know. I put them there when I noticed the cigarettes in the skull.  
J

 

Snoop. I’m fine with the cigarettes, actually. More traditional post-coital indulgence, I believe.  
SH

 

You’re not much of a one for tradition.  
J

 

But I am much of a one for cigarettes.  
SH

 

Bad man.  
J

 

Indeed. To put it mildly.  
SH

 

I don’t know that I’d go that far. No worse than I am.  
J

 

John Watson and his attacks of conscience. He spends half his life cringing.

 

You don’t smoke.  
SH

 

I have other vices.  
J

 

I never know what he means me to reply when he edges toward this subject.

 

Good night, John.  
SH

 

Good night, Sherlock.  
J

 

Clear out your text history, idiot.  
SH

 

See you tomorrow.  
J

 

Yes.  
SH

 

He is not going to clear out his text history. Perhaps I’ll check tomorrow. Chuck my phone onto the sofa and don’t retrieve it, even when I can hear a leathery buzz in the cushions. Lay a fire and light another cigarette instead. I sit watching the fire and smoking like an embarrassing cliche. One of the dangers of sentiment. It’s humanising.  
Wake in my chair with a crick in my neck, still clutching a cigarette. There’s a little burn scar in the sash of my dressing gown. Stand and stub the cigarette in the ashtray on the mantle. My eyes are clouded with grit and there’s an insistent pressure in my head. Just behind my eyebrows. Can’t go to bed, though. The sheets are full of him. Stretch out on the sofa instead. Even on the sofa, there are patches of his smell. Wisps of the ghost I left behind when I died.

~~~

"Go on then, gorgeous. Play something for me."

"Shut up, John. You’re drunk. Stop flirting."

"You like me flirting with you.” I sigh heavily. “Go on, Sherlock,” he wheedles, rubbing my knee and huffing whiskey breath against my jaw. “It’s been ages.” Truthfully, and I’d eat my violin before I’d say it to him, I can’t bear to see him look at me the way he does sometimes when I play for him. As if I am wonderful. As if he’ll never get his fill of looking at me. I know better than that. I didn’t always. I can’t bear for him to look at me the way he did when I thought he was mine (does he look at her that way, as well?)(he doesn’t, no. Not quite)(unless he hides it from me)(nodon’tstopshutup). Draw back slightly and shove his hand off my knee.

“Shut up, John. Go and make yourself a cup of coffee. Unless you want to explain to. Unless you want to explain why you’re coming home drunk.”

John scowls, “I’ll manage that end, thanks. You keep your nose out of it.”

“Manage it better, then, if you want me to keep my nose out of it. I’ve no interest at all in being the centrepiece of the disintegration of your marriage, however eager you are to foist that little disaster onto me.”

John’s scowl deepens and his left hand flexes. For a moment, he looks as if he’d quite like to hit me. Then his expression collapses. I turn away and rest my head against the arm of the sofa. “Well,” the pause is so pregnant that he need not go on, but he does. “If that’s the mood you’re in, I’ll just leave then, shall I?”

I shrug, “Comes to the same, doesn’t it? You always leave. I’m sure it’s your prerogative to choose the moment.”

“You’re one for talking about leaving,” he says. He ought to say it angrily, but it slides out sort of sadly and reluctantly. I don’t reply. Nothing to say to that. “I was waiting for you, you know,” he continues. “Before I lost you. Waiting for you to bloody observe that I was so fucking-” he cuts himself off. I’m still not looking at him, but I know his left hand is flexing again. He clears his throat, “I never really would have had you, would I? Not properly, ever. Would I? Married to your work, right?”

“Well,” I say, so stung that I can’t stop myself, “We’ll not likely find out now, will we? Now we’ve got a whole litany of things you’ll never forgive me for. The crown jewel being that I’ve stripped you of your characteristic nobility and turned you into some crass adulterer.”

“Oh fuck off, Sherlock! I never, ever fancied myself some sort of knight in shining armour. It was you who always pinned that rubbish on me! ‘Don’t make people into heroes,’ right? Well I’m not a fucking hero, and I never was, all right?” I sort of curl in on myself as he shouts at me, but I know what to expect even before he rises from the sofa. John bangs out of the flat, loud as he ever did.

He’s back barely five minutes later. I know his tread on the stairs before he taps at the door. I don’t answer.

He taps harder. “Sherlock? Please.” I know he can’t see me through the door, but I pull my dressing gown up over my head anyway, curl in on myself tighter. Wish there was a cigarette in arm’s reach. “I’ve got a key, you know. And your lockpick.” He won’t use the key. Being physically inside the room is not the point. Hear him sigh one of his eloquent sighs, even through the door. “Sherlock, we should have a proper talk. Not through the door, okay?”

“We might have had a proper talk months ago, when it might have made some difference. Save your guilt for your wife. You remember your wife. The person you are wronging.The person to whom you owe your tearful explanations. Or is this just a bit of practise?” Don’t raise my voice at all, so I’m not sure how much of that he got. But I hear a sharp little intake of breath about halfway through, so it must have been some of it. There’s a long silence. I’m tempted to wonder if he’s left. But I’d have heard his footsteps as he did.

“I can sit out here all night.”

True enough. I get to my feet, and John goes still and silent again. There’s an anticipatory timbre to this silence that I am rather looking forward to spiting. Go into my bedroom, dress quickly, and then go through the kitchen up to John’s old bedroom. It’s nothing now but boxes and a dusty bed, and I don’t spare it a look around before throwing open the window and climbing out of it.

I light a cigarette once I’m on the pavement and walk past my own front door looking down at my shoes. I’m still looking down at my shoes when I bang into Mary Watson coming round the corner. Drop my cigarette when she reaches for me and resist the urge to swear aloud.

“Oh, my other husband!” Mary says brightly. She pulls me to her by my shoulder and kisses me on the cheek (do I smell of him?)(stopshutup). “Hullo you. Have you seen John, love? His phone is switched off, and I was in the neighbourhood, so I thought I’d pop round and collect him if he was there.”

“I’ve been out,” I tell her as I return the kiss. Cringe a little at how brusque I sound. She knows when I’m fibbing.

“Mind if we pop by the flat and check? Since we’re so close, anyway,” Mary tucks her arm into mine and spins us back toward my flat. “I think I remember him saying he’d drop in on you after work, and he might be sitting with Mrs Hudson.”

“Not at all. Of course not,” I say. She knows when I’m fibbing. Mary marches me back home with distinct purpose, and we’re in sight of my front door in what seems like moments. She gives me a triumphant little nudge when she sees the knocker’s crooked. John always leaves the knocker crooked. The door flies open when Mary and I reach the foot of the stairs, and John steps out, brow furrowed, left hand clenching.

“Ooooh,” Mary murmurs conspiratorially. “Good thing you missed him, eh? His Nibs is in a bit of a temper, isn’t he?”

“Well this is cosy!” John says, descending the stairs with the little smile he wears when his fury is frightening him. He reaches for Mary at once, and she drops her hand from my arm and steps toward John with her chin tipped up, waiting for a kiss. I drop my eyes down to my shoes again. Wonder if she can taste the whiskey on his mouth(I could)(shut up!). I keep my eyes fixed on the ground and pretend not to hear John make the little sigh he makes after a kiss.

But he and Mary shuffle up close to me. She’ll have her arm tucked through his now. She likes that. Fight the urge to step back and make myself look up at them. They’re standing so close to me. “I’ve been waiting for you,” John says, airily (he lies so easily now; I’d never have believed it). “And here you are, running round with my wife.” Mary snorts. I drop my eyes again at that, hoping the resultant wave of queasiness isn’t sitting plain on my face, though I suspect it is. Hope he isn’t looking at me. Hope he doesn’t press me. Wish I could melt into the pavement. A cement block must be a decent existence. People expect very little of you. John doesn’t speak, and neither does Mary. Why are they waiting for me to answer?

“Well,” I say finally. “Here she is back, good as new. Even filled her up with petrol.” And Mary lays her warm hand on my arm and laughs and laughs.


End file.
